First Look: Ferrari FF

An In-Depth Look at the Car that's Pushing the Boundaries of Ferrari Tradition

Amedeo Felisa, Ferrari's chief executive and veteran engineer, says his all-new Ferrari FF four-seater is as fast around a track as a 599. "Not the GTO," he adds hastily, "but the regular 599." For the FF to be as fast as the shattering (and shatteringly hard-to-drive) GTO would be impossible. For it to be as quick as the regular 599 is merely miraculous.

Ferrari people are suspiciously keen to stress the Ferrari-ness of their new car. Could this be because the last time they strayed from their supersports heartland with the California, they suffered a squall of criticism for going soft and selling out?

Well, if the California tore the envelope of the traditional Ferrari ideal, then the new FF straight-up shreds it. It's got four adult-sized seats, a hatchback, and all-wheel-drive.

But here are some stats that might nudge it back towards Ferrari-ness in your mind. The car retains a 53-percent rear-axle weight distribution, and that weight is just 220 pounds more than a 599. Which, incidentally, makes it some 1000 pounds less than its nearest conceptual rival, the new Bentley Continental GT.

At 8000 rpm, the FF's new 6.3-liter direct-injection V-12 generates some 651 horsepower. Did that get your attention? It means a better power-to-weight ratio than the 599 GTB Fiorano, never mind the 612 Scaglietti, which the FF replaces. The über-responsive seven-speed dual-clutch gearbox is mounted as a rear transaxle, aiding weight distribution. As a result, Ferrari can plausibly claim a 0-62 mph figure of 3.7 seconds.

Felisa says the 612 Scaglietti accounted for just 10 percent of the company's worldwide sales, and that wasn't enough. His head of product marketing, Nicola Boari, said customer requirements were important in determining the direction of the new car, which in turn impacted the concept and execution. So it can seat four 6-foot, 2-inch occupants and carry two golf bags, or offer 15.9 cubic-feet for four weekend bags, or with the rear seat folded, two sets of vacation luggage -- all of which are accessible through the FF's hatchback. A full rear-seat AV system is available. And the AWD system means it's usable in wet climates.

It could have ended up a camel, a car designed by a committee of customers to a series of misbegotten, incompatible aims. But our first meeting with the FF reveals an elegant body encasing remarkably cohesive engineering solutions.

The novelty of the FF is the AWD system. Ferrari says it weighs roughly half of any other system that does the same job. The genius is that there is no driveshaft to the front. While the rear wheels and their seven-speed box are driven off the back of the engine as normal, the front wheels take their drive off the nose of the crank. Then there's a unit containing an electronically controlled wet clutch pack, a compact lightweight two-speed gearbox, and the front open diff.

That means the front axles drive doesn't operate through the main gearbox. Instead the drive force is varied by the ECU-controlled clutch pack. The first front gear is good for up to about 115 mph, when it automatically shifts to the higher ratio. As a result, the front wheels can never receive as much torque as the rear wheels would in the normal first or second or third gears, but then if they did they'd only spin, even in the dry. It is primarily a rear-drive Ferrari. The drive to the front is only an overspill.

In most situations it's almost entirely rear drive. But if the road gets slippery, the FF's electronic systems predict the point of rear-tire spin and divert torque to the otherwise idle fronts. That's good, because driving a 599 in the wet is hair-raising unless you tread on eggshells with the throttle.

The steering wheel manettino controls the strategy of the front clutch pack, together with transmission shift protocol and mapping of the magnetorheological dampers, rear e-diff, and the predictive F1 trac stability system. In race mode, there's very little front axle intervention; in the roadgoing and wet settings, the front axle joins in earlier, and the diff and stability systems emphasize stability over agility. The tires, by the way, aren't all-weather jobs, but proper gummy rollers of 295/35 rear and 245/35 front on 20-inch rims.

Felisa says the switch to Bosch's high-rev-capable direct injection system for the V-12 is expensive (even for Ferrari!) but, in combination with idle-stop and other measures, delivers a 25-percent economy gain over the Scaglietti with a 20-percent power increase.

Flavio Manzoni, SVP Design at Ferrari, says there was a cooperative effort between Pininfarina and his office that was headed in the main phase by Donato Coco (now at Lotus) and then Manzoni in the latter stages.

There are no particular flourishes other than those dictated by aero and packaging. But the engine hood is low because the V-12 is low and far back. The side grilles ahead of the doors extract pressure air from the wheel housings to cut lift, and another set at the rear does the same job for the back wheels. The principal generator of downforce is a wing hanging below the rear license plate. There's no roof spoiler because Manzoni wanted a clean fastback silhouette, so the airflow is separated by a small fixed lip at the base of the rear windshield.

Fortunately the functional and packaging demands were met by designers with poetry in their fingers. The car's lines flatter its proportions and the surfacing is taut and distinctive -- beautiful, even, though not wildly exotic.

Inside, the driver station follows 458 practice: a line-of-sight analog tach flanked by two color screens, one for car info and one for ICE and nav. There's also a large screen in the center console. Principal driving switchgear is on the steering wheel. Again, the driver will be reminded he's in a four-seater only when he sees the rear passengers in the mirror.

After the walk-around, we ask Felisa whether four doors were ever an option. They did think of three, he says, but it would have weakened the structure and added weight. Besides, he says, "Four doors is just not Ferrari." But it seems a four-seat AWD hatchback is, now, Ferrari.